Group of Ex-Howrey Lawyers Ready to Fight Clawback Claims on Ground They Weren't Really Partners

A lawyer representing about 60 former contract attorneys and nonequity partners at Howrey says they weren’t really partners.

Cecily Dumas, a partner at Dumas & Clark, notified the federal bankruptcy court in San Francisco of her representation in a court filing on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal blog Bankruptcy Beat.

Dumas told the blog that the lawyers she’s representing were partners in name only. “Even though these individuals had the title of partner, they were not partners in the true sense and therefore are not subject to partner clawback claims,” she asserted. “They shared in the downside, but they didn’t share in the upside.”